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 September will be here before you know it, and you're probably starting to think about sending out your first newsletter to students and parents. Using a consistent theme to your newsletters throughout the year helps keep them recognizable and easy to find when parents are searching through book bags so it's a good idea to decide on a tool and design before the year starts and then stick with it. However, you might also consider skipping the book bags altogether and making sure the news safely reaches parents by emailing them out. This week, I'm going to suggest several tools to do just that as well as give your newsletters some extra pizzazz.
The best deal out there is LetterPop. LetterPop makes creating newsletters a breeze. Offering almost 300 templates to choose from, you and your students will be able to find a look that fits any occasion. To add images in LetterPop, you can either upload them (single or in batches) or connect your account to your Flickr account to import them. After you have your images, you simply "drag and drop" them into the appropriate places on the template. All text is editable right on the page by clicking on it. It is surprisingly fast to edit images or text. You can add multiple pages to each newsletter, which maintains the "theme" of the template, while offering you different layout options. LetterPop really takes newsletters to a new level by giving you the option of emailing the newsletters rather than printing them out.
LetterPop has different pricing plans, the most attractive for a teacher being the "Free Plan," which has more than enough allowances for most classroom teacher needs. With the free account, a teacher is able to send out 10 newsletters a year (which along with your summer newsletter, that translates to one a month, suitable for most school calendars). You're allowed to send up to 25 contacts at a time (which may cut it a bit close), allowing you a total of 250 emails a year. Simply step up to the "Personal" account for $24.98 a year if you need more and your allotment significantly jumps: 52 published newsletters a year and 500 emails at a time (26,000 for the year)! Keep your parent and family emails in your LetterPop address book and send to all addresses at the push of a button. Recipients get a link in their email to click on and go read the newsletter online.
Another option is to use Newsletto which allows you to create stunning newsletters much like LetterPop, but this time, when you send to your recipients, they actually get the entire newsletter in the email without having to click on a web link to go to the Internet to view the newsletter. You can embed a simple form right on your website so people can sign up for the newsletter themselves. The free version of Newsletto only allows for 5 subscribers to the newsletter, but by upgrading to $7 a month, you can add up to 100 contacts and send a total of 1,000 emails.
An alternative to both Newsletto and LetterPop is SendLoop, which has very basic template choices and no possibility for images, but includes statistics on how many reads your newsletter receives and when people access it. This may be a good option for sending important information about field trips, classroom expectations, policies, etc. that don't need images but benefit from having the data of how many recipients have read the information. You can include your own banner in the newsletter and, in fact, Newsletto's designers will create one for your school for free whether you're a free or paid subscriber.
If you are just looking to print your newsletters, rather than send them via email, then don't forget about the abundant templates that Microsoft offers for Word. And, if you're a Mac user operating with Mac Os X Leopard, don't forget that you can already send dazzling newsletters by using the templates included in Apple's Mail program (look for it in the upper right hand corner when you start a new email message).
Have fun exploring these great tools for successful Classroom/Home Communication!  Bob Sprankle has been a multi-age teacher in Wells, ME for 10 years and has served as the school's Technology Integrator for the past two years.
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